A Song For Minecraftia: Mojang’s Eurovision Stage

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The Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final is tomorrow night, and you bet your bottom I’m excited! Our turbulent corner of the world (and some remote pals) come together for pop music pageantry as 26 performers give their all for the biggest night of their careers. Wooo! It’s a little sad that the official UK coverage mostly sees Eurovision as an excuse to be sarcastic about foreigners. But pssh, we don’t need that cynicism! So I wholly endorse this recreation of the Eurovision 2016 arena in Minecraft [official site].

You can download the stage from here, though do be aware that it’s for the original Java version of Minecraft, not the new Windows 10 one. Dunk it into your saves folder to play. This is a collaboration between Mojang, FyreUK (known for their intricate creations, as seen on YouTube), and a Swedish TV channel.

“That means fun flags on buses, singing tunnels, Swedish celebrities talking in subway stations, a pop-up Eurovision village, and previous winning tunes getting blasted out at pedestrian crossings. All those things are true by the way – Stockholm is hyped about what must be one of the most cheery, joyous competitions of the year.”

That sounds lovely.

The Eurovision finals will be streamed live on YouTube, by the way, for those of us without temelevision. I’ve not heard any of this year’s songs, wanting to be surprised, but this was my favourite song last year:

However, I do agree that the winning song from Sweden’s Måns Zelmerlöw was more Eurovision winner-y (that’s not meant to be a slight – different songs for different places, yeah?):

20 Comments

Correction: Eurovision finals will be streamed live on YouTube unless you live in America where they block it so that you’re forced to watch it on Logo, which most households do NOT get, or on Eurovision.tv where the streaming quality is worse than standard definition. (Yes, I’m a Yankee who loves Eurovision.)

So I’m guessing you missed the part where he mentioned Logo, and how almost no one gets that channel? It’s a channel that reaches not even 20% of the population. It’s not part of standard bundles, you pretty much have to go out of your way to get it!

Hey! Some of us get pretty excited here, too. It’s just with a vague undercurrent of disappointment that every year we’ll send someone awful, and every year we’ll have to put up with people who hate pop music whining about how nobody voting for our rubbish is due to political wrangling.

But this year, UK’s contribution is quite good, even excellent compared to the bad and gimmicky things they’ve sent previous years.

As a Swede, I’m of course excited that this years ESC is in Sweden and I think our song is good, but luckily it’s in no “danger” of winning. 2 wins three years apart is quite enough (Loreen 2012, Måns 2015). I’d like for us to keep getting in the top 10 or 15, but I’d also be happy if we didn’t win for another 10 years or so. We’ve already won 6 times now, only Ireland with 7 wins is ahead of us. While it’d be nice to break Ireland’s record, it could very well wait for a decade or two. Let some other nations win instead.

Last year was a very strong field. This year I’ve yet to find anything much to root for. Then again, it always takes me a while to get my Eurovision ears in. Everything sounds slightly off until I find myself watching the final and thinking “It’s not bad, this one.”

I’m not sure that you quite have the moral high ground to attack uk snobbery of Eurovision coverage as all just a bit of camp foreign frippery, when there is literally a gay joke in the first sentence of the article…

I think it’s universally (the universe is as eurocentric as anything) acknowledged that the ESC has little to do with either music or Europe these days. It’s hardly even a proper contest. At some point, in the far reaches of history, it might have been a real “European” “contest” in actual “music”, but that’s a discussion that’s largely academic at this point. You might as well complain that (American) Wrastlin’ is fake or that reality TV is anything but; that’s just a given you have to live with.